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USA Today Tweets Out Massively Inaccurate Chart About Power of Atomic Bomb

A GBU-43B, or massive ordnance air blast weapon / AP
April 13, 2017

USA Today significantly misstated the power of the atomic bomb used against Hiroshima in a chart it tweeted out after a U.S. bombing conducted in Afghanistan on Thursday.

Targeting a series of Islamic State tunnels in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, the U.S. dropped a 21,600-pound GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, nicknamed the "Mother of All Bombs." It has the explosive yield of 11 tons of TNT.

The atomic bomb used against Hiroshima, Japan in 1945, codenamed "Little Boy," had an explosive yield equivalent to 15 kilotons of TNT, but the USA Today chart said it was merely 15 tons of TNT.

The difference is by a factor of 1,000.

The chart made it seem as though the bomb used by the U.S. on Thursday was nearly as powerful as the atomic bomb that leveled the Japanese city and killed tens of thousands of people.

The newspaper deleted the tweet after numerous people pointed out the error.

Published under: Afghanistan , Military